Black Jewel

Can’t play it. Just sits on the Home Screen

It's awesome! The style is spot on, especially the music! The only down side is: Short and really hard without cheat... And sometimes even with that too! But now I'm not sure what's going on. I was pretty sure that this was a REAL C64 game. It's that faithful. Only one sound effect "told" me that this couldn't be at that time. Had to do some research, and I found that this is basicly an upgraded version of Storm Warrior. Graphics and music wise. And a bit longer. And... Found an actual Sega Megadrive / Genesis game demo called Black Jewel Reborn, and even for NES! But this is the "real deal". Those are good too, but I was always been a Commodore 64 one guy. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3675760040 https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3675761551

A truly horrendous game that wouldn't have been forgivable even on the C64 it was inspired by. There's no escaping from the fact this is a clunky, shallow and unsatisfactory attempt at a game to house a decent soundtrack. I can't believe I was stupid enough to pay money for this.

Black Jewel, developed by Oscar Celestini and published by Forever Entertainment S.A., is a modest indie project that embraces a stripped-down approach to gameplay, focusing on immediacy and simplicity rather than depth or complexity. It presents itself as a compact action experience, one that aims to be easy to understand and quick to engage with, but in doing so, it reveals both the strengths and limitations of such a minimal design philosophy. The gameplay is built around a very straightforward loop, placing the player in confined spaces where they must navigate, avoid threats, and interact with enemies using a limited set of mechanics. Controls are intuitive and require little time to learn, allowing players to jump in almost instantly. This accessibility is one of the game’s most noticeable advantages, as it avoids overwhelming the player with systems or layers of complexity. However, this same simplicity quickly becomes repetitive, as the game does not significantly expand on its core mechanics. Encounters begin to feel predictable, and the lack of variation means that the experience can lose its sense of engagement relatively early. Progression follows a linear structure, …

Loved it! A short and sweet platformer/slash-em-up with excellent C64-style retro aesthetics, awesome music, and stiff and awkward controls it feels good to finally get a hang of. Black Jewel comes off as punishingly difficult, for two main reasons: - The aforementioned clunky controls (you have to wait through animations to turn around and swing your sword). - Instead of enemies knocking you back when they hit you, they just quickly drain your life for as long as their sprite overlaps yours. You can lose a ton of HP very quickly if you're not careful, including on ground spikes that you might not notice among other background elements. There are no lives, checkpoints or continues, so a death means restarting from the beginning. Having said that, it's also quite accommodating for two reasons: - While the game is going through its loading sequence, type "RYAN" to enable automatic life regeneration. This makes the game exponentially more forgiving, and I made use of this mode once to learn the lay of the land and familiarize myself with what the game had to offer. - The whole game can be beat in less than 15 minutes, so even though you need to start over after every death it doesn'…

"Black Jewel" is supposed to be like a Commodore 64 game, but it plays more like a Genesis game like Altered Beast. It's super hard until you figure out how to play it. You only get one life to beat the whole game. It takes about 15 minutes if you know what to do. Basically, fighting enemies in this game is a death trap. All you can do is swing your sword and it has such limited range that you exchange as much damage as you dish out. I found the trick was just to jump over all the minor enemies and focus on fighting the bosses with as much health as possible. You don't get points, but there aren't any achievements and the points feel meaningless as a result, so the only real goal is to beat the game. The boss fights are fun but much of the RNG on their attack patterns will likely frustrate you to no end. The middle of this game is basically nearly impossible at times because there are mushrooms that shoot fireballs in random patterns. There's also a really cruel bit near the end where you pretty much MUST make a jump over a long pit or you won't get a health refill and it's impossible to win. When I say a long jump, I mean the character's sprite must be halfway off the platform…